FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1997 Page 14A

Hutchinson grills exdrug runner in hearing

BY SUSAN ROTH Arkansas DemocratGazette

WASHINGTON Congressman Asa Hutchinson was back in prosecutor mode
Thursday, interrogating a former Colombian drug runner testifying on
Capitol Hill.

Hutchinson, RArk., was U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas
from 198285. As a freshman legislator from Northwest Arkansas, he has
turned a longtime interest in fighting illegal drug use into one of his
main issues in Congress.

Thursday, he and other members of the House Crime Subcommittee heard about
the inner workings of the Medellin cartel, one of Colombia's most notorious
drug trafficking organizations, from a former deputy of the cartel's New
York City branch.

"This is a very important issue that confronts our country," Hutchinson
said as the panel opened its hearing. "Being from Arkansas, sometimes it's
thought that what happens in the big cities does not affect us in middle
America. But my experience has been that there's been cocaine that flows
directly from Colombia to New York City and into Arkansas. This is very
relevant not just to big cities, but to all of America."

"Mr. Rodriguez," as the former deputy asked to be called, was led into the
hearing room wearing blue jeans, a light blue tshirt and a black hood over
his head. He testified and answered the panel's questions in Spanish, with
translation from a woman who also declined to be identified for her
protection.

Rodriguez was arrested and convicted in 1996 and is in prison in New York.
He told of a welloiled operation of transportation, security, cash
payments and money laundering in Colombia; storage of drugs and cash in
Manhattan apartments; and deliveries of the "merchandise" to a network of
Dominican distributors in upper Manhattan.

He said the cartel has four ports of entry into the United States: Houston,
Miami, Los Angeles and New York. It also has representatives in Chicago,
Boston and Philadelphia, he said. But Rodriguez said the New York branch is
the main one, handling large quantities of drugs at high prices.

The cartel doesn't use Hispanic drivers to transport drugs to New York from
other ports because they're more likely to be stopped, Rodriguez said.
Cartel workers also stash drugs in secret compartments in truck roofs
"because it is harder for the dogs to detect the drugs there."

The cartel's "collectors," described as former police officers or assassins
in Colombia, use the same methods to collect debts in America that they
used in Colombia, "kidnapping, intimidation and murder," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said the cartel pays off local police and military personnel in
Colombia to provide security.

But under questioning by Hutchinson, Rodriguez said, "I do not believe they
are engaging in that type of corruption here in the U.S." He said he didn't
know anything about similar attempts to corrupt authorities in New York.

In Colombia, the cartel is concerned about both national authorities and
robberies of their merchandise, Rodriguez said. But robberies are a bigger
worry in New York, he told Hutchinson.

Asked to compare the cartel's resources with those of U.S. law enforcement,
Rodriguez said, "I believe there is a certain disadvantage on the side of
the war against drugs.

"With the money available, [cartels] find a lot of ways to avoid the
authorities," he said, adding that continued demand for merchandise in the
United States remains a powerful incentive to keep the business going.

Copyright 1997, Little Rock Newspapers, Inc. All rights reserved.